{"id":1963,"date":"2025-03-06T11:33:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T10:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/2025\/03\/translators-fees-per-standard-page-per-standard-line-per-word-per-hour\/"},"modified":"2025-03-06T11:53:32","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T10:53:32","slug":"translators-fees-per-standard-page-per-standard-line-per-word-per-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/2025\/03\/translators-fees-per-standard-page-per-standard-line-per-word-per-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"Translators&#8217; fees: per standard page, per standard line, per word, per hour?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"shariff shariff-align-flex-end shariff-widget-align-flex-start\" style=\"display:none\"><ul class=\"shariff-buttons theme-round orientation-horizontal buttonsize-small\"><li class=\"shariff-button mastodon\" style=\"background-color:#ccc\"><a href=\"https:\/\/s2f.kytta.dev\/?text=Translators%E2%80%99%20fees%3A%20per%20standard%20page%2C%20per%20standard%20line%2C%20per%20word%2C%20per%20hour%3F https%3A%2F%2Fwww.defrent.de%2Fen%2F2025%2F03%2Ftranslators-fees-per-standard-page-per-standard-line-per-word-per-hour%2F via @defrentck@hessen.social\" title=\"Share on Mastodon\" aria-label=\"Share on Mastodon\" role=\"button\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"shariff-link\" style=\"; 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background-color:#79b428; color:#fff\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"shariff-icon\" style=\"\"><svg width=\"32px\" height=\"20px\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 18 32\"><path fill=\"#3b5998\" d=\"M17.1 0.2v4.7h-2.8q-1.5 0-2.1 0.6t-0.5 1.9v3.4h5.2l-0.7 5.3h-4.5v13.6h-5.5v-13.6h-4.5v-5.3h4.5v-3.9q0-3.3 1.9-5.2t5-1.8q2.6 0 4.1 0.2z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"shariff-button twitter\" style=\"background-color:#ccc\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.defrent.de%2Fen%2F2025%2F03%2Ftranslators-fees-per-standard-page-per-standard-line-per-word-per-hour%2F&text=Translators%E2%80%99%20fees%3A%20per%20standard%20page%2C%20per%20standard%20line%2C%20per%20word%2C%20per%20hour%3F\" title=\"Share on X\" aria-label=\"Share on X\" role=\"button\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"shariff-link\" style=\"; background-color:#79b428; color:#fff\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"shariff-icon\" style=\"\"><svg width=\"32px\" height=\"20px\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\"><path fill=\"#000\" d=\"M14.258 10.152L23.176 0h-2.113l-7.747 8.813L7.133 0H0l9.352 13.328L0 23.973h2.113l8.176-9.309 6.531 9.309h7.133zm-2.895 3.293l-.949-1.328L2.875 1.56h3.246l6.086 8.523.945 1.328 7.91 11.078h-3.246zm0 0\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n<p>While per word and per hour fees for translations are known around the world, Germany has two additional invoicing units: per standard line and per standard page. In 2019, I had already published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/DeFrEnT_Die-Standardseite.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"DeFrEnT: Standardseite, Standardzeile (PDF)\">PDF demonstrating such \u201cstandard\u201d page\/lines in German<\/a>. It included an anecdote why &#8220;give me a rough estimate&#8221; is a notoriously bad idea for texts the translator has not had a chance to see and assess. Now, the topic got back to me when a client asked: &#8220;Your competitor has made me a per word offer, but you are calculating per standard line \u2013 <strong>how am I supposed to compare these?<\/strong>&#8220;<\/p>\n\n<!--more-->\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How do translators set prices per word \/ line \/ page?<\/h3>\n\n<p><p>Translation pricing is a bizarre world of its own, as most other service providers (attorneys, estate agents, designers, craftsmen, &#8230;) are being <strong>paid by the hour<\/strong>. Prices <strong>per word or per standard line<\/strong> are calculated by using empirical values (read: experience, gut feeling) for how many of those textual units can possibly be translated in one hour, and dividing the hourly fee by this figure.<br\/>&#13;\nThe hourly fee itself ideally ought to be calculated by dividing the cost of living, social security contributions, taxes, retirement plans, office supplies, a new PC or laptop once every 3-5 years, <span style=\"border-bottom: 1px dashed black;\" title=\"There's got to be some fun in it!\">fun expenses<\/span>, etc. by the number of <em>productive<\/em> 8-hour days per year (this can range from &lt;140 to &gt;260 days per year, but will never be 365!). This is called <em>cost-based pricing<\/em> and often happens with bad translation agencies.<br\/>&#13;\nWell, or maths isn&#8217;t your cup of tea (boo!) and you&#8217;re stuck with looking at what the others take and try to be in that range, too. This is called <em>competition-based pricing<\/em> \u2013 a method that can bring (solo-)entrepreneurs into deep red figures fast; just as the method where you <em>leave it to the client how much they want to pay<\/em> \u2013 this is called <em>demand-oriented pricing<\/em> and most often happens in the &#8220;bottom-feeder translation agency&#8221; environment.<\/p><p>&#13;\n<\/p><p>You can generally identify experienced professionals by asking them how they fixed their prices, and why they want more money for this job or client than for another job or client.<\/p><\/p>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Where did standard pages and standard lines come from?<\/h3>\n\n<p>When thinking of \u201ctranslators\u201d, people usually first think of <em>literature translators<\/em>, this small and romanticized market segment\u00a0in the language \u201cindustry\u201d that never keeps up with industrial or business translation (in terms of volume and income). <strong>Literary translators<\/strong> historically have been lumped in with <strong>authors<\/strong>, and those have traditionally been paid by <strong>publishing houses in Germany<\/strong> by a typical typewriter page, the &#8220;<strong>Standard Page<\/strong>&#8221; of 30 lines \u00d7 55 characters, thus 1.650 key strokes, but minus a bit of whitespace to make it a nice, round 1.500 keystrokes per standard page (again, have a look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/DeFrEnT_Die-Standardseite.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"DeFrEnT: Standardseite, Standardzeile (PDF)\">example PDF<\/a>).<br\/>&#13;\nAt some moment, however, some clever genius noticed that translations could actually be <em>shorter than a full page<\/em> outside the context of entire books, and voil\u00e0! The <strong>standard line<\/strong> of 55 keystrokes (including spaces) was born.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/WordLengthFrequencies.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/ftp\/arxiv\/papers\/1207\/1207.2334.pdf#2 noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"241\" src=\"http:\/\/www.defrent.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/WordLengthFrequencies-300x241.png\" alt=\"WordLengthFrequencies\" class=\"wp-image-281\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/WordLengthFrequencies-300x241.png 300w, https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/WordLengthFrequencies-768x617.png 768w, https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/WordLengthFrequencies.png 789w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>In many countries outside of Germany, especially in <strong>France<\/strong>, the <strong>UK<\/strong> and the <strong>US<\/strong>, the almighty publishers took parallel steps to convert those pesky and uncalculable hour-based fees to an \u201cobjective\u201d text-based unit \u201cto bring them all, and in the darkness bind\u201d the authors and translators: The <strong>per word pricing<\/strong>.<br\/>&#13;\nBefore the advent of personal computers, words\/lines\/pages simply were easier to count than characters\/keystrokes. Hence, they counted those made-up units. Today, it would be entirely feasible to invoice <em>by character<\/em> because computers are good at counting even the tiniest of units &#8211; but which human would be able to convert  \u201cEUR 0.0254 per character\u201d into something resembling a final project price?<\/p>\n\n<p>While the always correct Germans have fixed a very clear definition of what a \u201cline\u201d is (see above), our international neighbours were less preoccupied with the fact that the <em>average word length differs between languages<\/em>. A value often cited for the <strong>Average Word Length for German is 7\u00bd characters<\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.duden.de\/sprachwissen\/sprachratgeber\/Durchschnittliche-Lange-eines-deutschen-Wortes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Externer Link: Duden - Durchschnittliche Wortl&#xE4;nge\">the renowned Duden dictionary explains ways of counting this<\/a>. German, however, is a language where we have <em>compound nouns<\/em> that can become significantly longer (&#8220;Aktion\u00e4rs|versammlungs|einladung&#8221; = &#8220;invitation (to the) meeting (of) shareholders&#8221;), as the DV\u00dcD explains on its German <a href=\"http:\/\/dvud.de\/2014\/09\/wie-ermittle-ich-die-textmenge\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"External Link: DV&#xDC;D Blog - Wie ermittle ich die Textmenge?\">translation blog<\/a>.<br\/>&#13;\nThus, per word fees are much more palatable for languages that do not build compound words. For the <strong>English language<\/strong>, words are, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolframalpha.com\/input\/?i=average+english+word+length\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Externer Link: Wolfram Alpha - Average Word Length English\">Wolfram Alpha<\/a>, only <strong>5.1 characters on average<\/strong>, while <strong>French words have 5.3 characters on average<\/strong> (in this <a href=\"http:\/\/jeunesecrivains.superforum.fr\/t23881-longueur-moyenne-des-mots-francais\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Externer Link: Jeunesecrivains Forum - Longueur des mots\">French Young Writers forum<\/a>, authors cite 6 characters per word, if one counts +1 keystroke for the space or punctuation following each word).<br\/>&#13;\nWhat&#8217;s more, the ratio of source text volume to target text volume can differ wildly, as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/International\/articles\/article-text-size\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Externer Link: W3C Text lengths\">W3C<\/a> notes:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;Generally speaking: the shorter the original source text, the longer its translation will be in relation to the original text volume.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Despite all this, there actually are colleagues who are still invoicing by the hour like other service providers \u2013 especially for creative and marketing translations. The argument goes: While technical translators have to stay close to the original text, the so-called \u201ctranscreators\u201d rebuild a message from scratch to convey its meaning, its emotions to a culturally different audience, that is, they are in fact writing <em>new texts<\/em> that are not directly comparable with the originals. This requires extensive research and a creative process which can either be \u201cspeed of thought\u201d or very long and cumbersome until the epiphany hits, as explained in &#8220;<a title=\"Wikipedia (EN): Transcreation\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Transcreation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Transcreation<\/a>&#8220;. On the other hand: Even in technical translation, where things must be exact and technically correct, research is a necessity.<br\/>&#13;\nFor most clients and their experience with service fees in general, an hourly fee can be more easily compared to all those known &#8220;per hour&#8221; fees, so offering an hourly fee would actually make translators more comparable.<\/p>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to compare per word and per standard line prices?<\/h3>\n\n<p>The <strong>Average Word Length in German<\/strong> comes in quite handy because <strong>dividing 55 characters per standard line by 7.5 characters per word equals nearly 7 words per line<\/strong> (7\u00d77.5=52.5). Likewise, the <strong>English<\/strong> and <strong>French<\/strong> word lengths of 5.1 and 5.3, respectively, are easy to convert to <strong>11 (English) or 10 (French) words per standard line<\/strong> (5.1\u00d711=56.1 and 5.3\u00d710=53).<br\/>&#13;\nFor more exact values, use \u00d77,3 (DE), \u00d710,78 (EN) and \u00d710,38 (FR).<\/p>\n\n<p>At this point, clients also need to know whether a particular translator invoices <strong>by source text<\/strong> (the original) or <strong>by target text<\/strong> (the translation). From my point of view and from the POV of most clients, invoicing by source text is more transparent: The client sends his text to the translator, who can immediately count the text volume and write his offer.<br\/>&#13;\nHowever, many colleagues are rightly asking why they should be paid for what the client brings them instead of what they themselves have written, their own work. The downside of this approach is: You can only get a very rough estimate on the final price. In the languages I work in, <strong>translations are often up to 15% longer or shorter than the original text<\/strong> due to linguistic and grammatical differences: sometimes, there is no direct translation and concepts have to be explained, commented or otherwise put differently; sometimes, syntax (the way sentences can be constructed) just differs; or one language does not have grammatical genders while the other has three to integrate into male, female and neutral nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives &#8211; as singular and plural forms.<br\/>&#13;\nThe bottom line is that <em>depending on the languages involved and which invoicing mode is used, word- or line-based fees may seem vastly different even if the underlying hourly rate is the same!<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Did this clear things up for you, or are you more confused than ever? Would you prefer an hourly rate, just as with other services, or do you like the possiblity to have a fixed price calculation up front? I&#8217;m looking forward to your comments!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While per word and per hour fees for translations are known around the world, Germany has two additional invoicing units: per standard line and per standard page. In 2019, I had already published a PDF demonstrating such \u201cstandard\u201d page\/lines in German. It included an anecdote why &#8220;give me a rough estimate&#8221; is a notoriously bad<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"blog-btn\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/2025\/03\/translators-fees-per-standard-page-per-standard-line-per-word-per-hour\/\" class=\"home-blog-btn\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,24,30],"tags":[95],"class_list":["post-1963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-howto-en","category-translation-industry","tag-for-clients"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Christopher K\u00f6bel","author_link":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/author\/defrenter\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1963"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2025,"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions\/2025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.defrent.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}